No one expects too much from a licensed game. We all know they tend to be cynical quick cash-ins. Then again… that’s not always actually true, is it? Gran Turismo? Any sport game you want to pick. Sometimes, you get a little slice of fried gold like in the rather tasty Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher’s Bay. Or genuinely amazing games like Golden Eye. The kids, I’m told they like the Naruto game, not that I have any idea what that is. And I dunno about you but I’ve been enjoying the hell out of the LEGO games which have combined several licences to good effect. Including two Lucasarts properties, which seems statistically impossible. WWE, Aliens vs. Predator, the lists go on. So the stigma that goes with licences isn’t nearly as bad as you’d think.

Then again, sometimes a game comes along that is so execrably awful that you wonder if the designers, producers, licensors, everyone involved with the release, actively hate and detest the property they are given. And hate you by releasing it. Such is the case with Hellboy: Science of Evil.

This game is acutely terrible. You will have more fun trying to fit the controller into your tearduct than you would actually playing it.

Before I start – I can’t confirm, but the rumour is that the game was delayed a year or two so as to be released at the same time as the sequel to the film. That may very well be true. But being a bit dated sure as hell isn’t this game’s problem.

Listen: I love Hellboy. So should you. The movie was ok but the comics are masterpieces of spookiness, sly comedy and a gigantic red bastard with a gigantic red hand smashing the hell out of elves, vampires, demons, giants and whatever else you can name. Hellboy works for a ghost-hunting government agency and has a dark destiny as Anti-Christ he couldn’t give two damns for. He just wants a beer, a cigar and a good meal.

Ron Perlman, an actor everyone from your mum to you probably really digs, voices Hellboy as he did in the film. Ron Perlman is very cool. He has the kind of deep, honey-coloured voice you just want to relax into while his big strong arms protect you from the big bad world… well, maybe that’s just me. Either way, he’s a big part of the draw of the game. The man knows what he’s doing, having done half a dozen great roles in games.

‘So’, says some hypothetical, fictional producer straw man I’ve made up for the purposes of mockery, ‘you know what would be a good idea? If we take this great voice-actor who we are banking a lot of our game’s charisma on, then we make an audio dub so terrible the players can barely hear him!?’
‘Sold!’ says some other fictional flunky.

Moving on, let’s talk plot. I don’t know about you but I’m a huge believer in that a character and a good story is a big part of what nudges a game from fun to involving. I don’t think we have to look past Portal to have that proven once and for all. So take Hellboy, who’s continually using ace little gadgets against a huge variety of creepy/spooky/terrifying/bombastic villains. Hellboy just doesn’t give a toss about demon lords and Nazi severed heads - dark and apocalyptic motivations and his flat disinterest in them is a big part of his humour. The superbly sinister and often weirdly sad atmosphere of the comics is totally missing from the game. It’s almost as if plot and story telling actively irritated the developers.

‘Yeah, I like Hellboy but take out everything that makes it stylish. Just have him run a lot. Kids love running but, they’re too stupid to want a story. Forget it!’ says our new made up pal. Probably while drowning a dog.

Dropping Hellboy in media res, or into the middle of the story for those of you who don’t like poncy Latin, is one thing. Refusing to explain why you’re chasing around a witch is another. Having missions that might be flashbacks, of flash-forwards, or flash-diagonals, utterly failing to explain why both the character and the player should care is another still. The big boss villain isn’t even explained. His evil plot is patently a weak attempt to reuse the pitifully few monsters in the game. Missions include ‘get out of this cave.’ ‘Fight these Nazis in the desert. No, we won’t goddamn tell you why he’s in the desert. Also, we won’t explain why Hellboy is working for aliens.’

This seems to me the equivalent of chucking you into a Star Wars game and having the main character get frightened by a light sabre and eagerly going back to work on a moisture farm. Or having GTA IV emphasise Nico’s desire to get a bus filled with children safely to school. It is a staggeringly stupid, blisteringly idiotic way to approach Hellboy. Lazy, disconnected and just disrespectful.

Let’s talk gameplay. Ok. Here is an: X
Here is a: Y

I want you to lift up your hand and press that X. Now, carefully press that X again and then press that Y. Did you do that without picking your nose, putting out your eye or forcing that digit painfully into a wall socket while grunting like a wolf in a cider press? Congratulations! You’ve proved you have the incredible dexterity and skills to play and win Hellboy: Science of Evil.

Yep, the game is just that damn easy. I think, not counting boss fights, that I died exactly twice in the entire game and one of those times happened when I was screaming in rage at the television so much that my eyes burst a vessel, so letting the controller slip from my plasma-slicked hands. It’s a third-person shooter/fighter but you’ll get about five combos to deal with the enemies. You’ll fight between two and three enemies per level. One of those levels enemies are weird looking dog-things with elephant noses. All except for two mini-boss fights they are all you fight. The most dangerous enemy in the game was the clipping and getting Hellboy stuck on invisible artefacts.

My entirely fictional producer seems to have mandated a game that your grandmother and the average limbless, eyeless house pet could beat.
‘Seriously, I want a game my kid could play!’ entirely fictional producer seems to have said, not realising that his child was a two-month old foetus in a womb.

You’ll have exhausted your repertoire of moves five minutes into the game. Now, not every thing has to be Devil May Cry but in the name of Holy God, it would have been nice to have, I dunno, a finishing move that involved a Gigantic Red Fist. No, no. That would be a good idea, you see and our fictional producer seems to use those to clean his nipples with. Instead, you get a lame, tame finishing move, one for each mob. To perform said finishing move you have to line up on a substantially damaged enemy and press the right trigger hopefully. As oftentimes the camera is too far away to even see which enemies are glowing, you may see how this is difficult. And by difficult I mean teeth-grindingly aggravating and frustrating. As the collision detection on this game is about as accurate as trying to clutch an albino’s ghost in a snowstorm, you’ll often find yourself making Hellboy just grab at the air in a manoeuvre that seems to indicate he’s, ah… pleasuring himself… rather than in combat.

Now, to spice up the zombie-fest gameplay, Hellboy’s bigass revolver, the Samaritan, can be used as a ranged weapon. It’s a gigantic .45 and is supposed to blow away demons, muppets, draculas, Loch Ness monsters and all the rest. To simulate how effective the gun is, stand up, go outside and pick a fight. Go on…

Instead of throwing a punch, pop a large zit onto your opponent. The spray of pus and oil will roughly simulate how effective the Samaritan is during combat. Not to mention that of the half-dozen or so ‘special ammos’ you get, you’ll be using only one of them effectively during combat. Picking up ammo happens so slowly that the simple act of loading your gun is a chore. There’s lots of destructible items to throw at people but the constantly shifting targeting system makes that about as much fun as eating shrapnel picked out of a sailor’s wounds.

Finding places to aim that gun or toss that debris is possibly the most difficult choice of the game. You see, Science of Evil uses a fixed camera. Lots of people don’t like fixed camera games but I’ve got no problem with them. Sometimes I don’t want to have to slow down in a fight and swing the game environment around me like a fat man adjusting his boobs. Done well, as in the demo levels of Too Human, it can even be dramatic. Hellboy uses exactly one artistically framed shot. Hazy Nazis come at you down a long tunnel, sinisterly backlit. Of course, nudge the joystick a picometer forward and that’s it for good framing.

Level design? There’s none. One entire chapter of the game is a straight line. At no point can you become lost. I actually got excited when I fell off a bridge, thinking I might not know how to navigate back to my starting position. The puzzles were the equivalent of giving a skipping rope to a baby. Pointless and cruel. The only time you’ll be challenged is about ten minutes in when the designers apparently forgot to put in a useful hint. This isn’t so much ‘challenging’ as ‘mocking’.

Then there’s boss fights. When fighting a gigantic cyborg gorilla, you’d think the game would perk up. No. You punch it. Then you play a God of War-style mini-game. The first time I did this, I leapt on the beast’s back. Y, I did press, to counter its attempts to get me off. Then, what seemed thirty seconds later, I pressed Y again. I was so bored I didn’t even realise I should have been attacking in the middle of the mini-game. Soon, disinterest forced me to punch the gorilla to work up my frustration. Apparently the game got as bored as I did with the state of affairs and he seemed to just… die. I imagine it and I were equally relieved. Later, you fight a giant thing that looks almost exactly like the evil plant from Little Shop of Horrors. That’s right, Science of Evil copies a 22 year old comedy film about a puppet plant.

The most difficult part of reviewing Hellboy is locating where the worst part of it lies. The multiplayer is boring old split screen. I couldn’t find anyone on Xbox Live to play with. You get to use either Liz or Abe Sapien supporting Hellboy but someone has to be Red. Maybe the game transforms in multiplayer but I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest not.

I’d like to say that at the core of this rushed, badly-designed, pretty much totally uncared-for game is a huge missed chance. But it isn’t. It is a rush-job, not anywhere near an alpha-release. It is actually less enjoyable than the ’99 PS2 release Nocturne, which covered similar ground only it looked better and had only marginally less complicated gameplay. I’m not joking there. I put it on after Hellboy and it was like rinsing out the mouth with fine wine after swallowing human fat and petrol.

About a quarter of the way through Hellboy I thought I’d only be able to recommend it to die-hard fans of the franchise but the almost total lack of story or Hellboy-style plots means I can’t even do that. I can only tell you that if you spend money on this game, you might as well sell your forebrain for magic beans, round paper and mittens.

The producers of this game should be ashamed they didn’t put a warning on it, ‘Not fit for human consumption.’ No, they should just be ashamed. You’d have more fun smashing your own face off with a hammer. Although our fictional producer straw man, based on his frankly evil lack of care about you as a gamer, consumer and human, would chortle at your pain.